Mostly-Blind Study of 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet' - Carlo Bonavia

Did something a little different today. In the vein of the Technical Challenge in the Great British Bake-Off, where the contestants are required to use their baking knowledge and instinct to replicate a bare-bones recipe, I decided to make a very quick study from a painting - in this case, Carlo Bonavia's 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet'. From there I no longer looked at the original, instead relying on my early sketch and my painting knowse to highlight what I did and didn't know.

Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet - Carlo Bonavia, 1757

My initial sketch, the only part of the painting that actually referenced the original. Observe the absenve of the ship - this continues the whole way through, because I was more interested in the overall landscape than the fiddly details of the ship.

 

Attempting to come to terms with that rock.

Ehhh... let's add 'rock' to the list of things I need to study.

Let's throw 'clouds' onto that list, too.

And my final, with distinctly absent shipwreck and a lighthouse that was definitely not there in the original. It needed something to be sitting there, and that whole side was dark, so a lighthouse seemed the obvious choice. Oh, and just for good measure, put 'water' on the list as well.

And here's the original again, for comparison's sake. Goddamn, did I lose track of it. Nevertheless, despite not having a technically brilliant outcome, I learnt a lot about what I don't know, which in some cases is far more important than actually learning something objectively useful.